TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:Pierre Seel: 1923.Pierre’s troubles began when his watch was stolen while he was in a public square in his Alsace home in 1939. The watch, a gift from his godmother, had sentimental value, and so he reported the theft to police. The square where the theft occurred was a well-known cruising ground for gay men in the area, but since homosexuality was not illegal in France, there shouldn’t have been much of a problem. But local police added his name to a list of gay men they were maintaining anyway, and when the Germans invaded in 1940, that list fell into Gestapo hands. Seel was picked up in 1941, was beaten, had his fingernails pulled out, and raped with broken rulers. Two weeks later, he was sent to the Schirmeck-VorbrÃ¼ck camp near Strasbourg, where the beatings, tortures and rapes continued. He wore a blue bar on his uniform instead of the pink triangle — The blue bar was reserved for Catholics and “a-socials” — but the nature of his “crime” was well known. “There was no solidarity for the homosexual prisoners; they belonged to the lowest caste,” he later recalled. “Other prisoners, even when between themselves, used to target them.” His camp was made to stand and watch as his eighteen-year-old boyfriend was stripped naked in the center of the yard and torn apart and devoured by german shepherds. That scene would haunt his nightmares for the rest of his life.

After six months of starvation, torture and forced labor, Seen was set free without an explanation. What’s more, he was made a German citizen when Alsace was informally annexed by Germany, and he was drafted into the army. After the war, during which Seel was sent to fight on the Eastern Front, he made his way back to France. He took his family’s advice and went deeply underground about his sexuality, and married in 1950. The marriage was a difficult one, and it finally fell apart in 1978. In 1979, Seel happened to attend a debate in a bookstore for the launch of the French edition of Heinz Heger’s book, The Men with the Pink Triangle. Two years later, Seel publicly told his story when the Bishop of Strasbourg denounced the performance of the French translation of the play Bent, which was based on Heger’s book. From then on, Seel became an advocate for the recognition of gay victims of the Nazis, particularly those from the Alsace and Moselle regions of France. In 1994, Seel published his own memoir, I, Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual. In 2000, he appeared in the American-made documentary, Paragraph 175. When the documentary premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, Seel traveled to Germany for the first time since the war and received a five-minute standing ovation.

France still has an uneasy don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy where German collaboration is concerned, and Seel’s opening of old wounds didn’t go down easy. In the 1980s and 1990s, he received numerous death threats, and was attacked and beaten by youths shouting homophobic epithets following an appearance on French television. The mayor of Strasbourg refused to shake his hand during a commemoration ceremony. But the distance of time has allowed some recognition of historical realities to take root. Seel received official recognition as a victim of the Holocaust in 2003, and in 2008, three years after his death in Toulouse, his adopted city, renamed a street in his honor. The plaque reads, “Rue Pierre Seel – Déporté FranÃ§ais pour homosexualité – 1923-2005”.

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I teared up when I read this. How sick is the human race? How terrible is it that in the US today we have people that think that this sort of treatment is justified? I’d like to know how someone like Rick Santorum could read of this and not even stop to think that his rhetoric is like that of the Nazi’s and completely reprehensible?

As horrified as I am by M. Seel’s treatment at the hands of monsters, I celebrate and am awed by the life he led. He refused to remain silent and he outlived the monsters many fold. His is the triumph of the human spirit over evil.

As tempting as it may be to attribute the worst of humanity’s possible attributes to people who don’t like us and whom we don’t like, that is a fool’s game.

No, Christians would not do the same to Gays if they were allowed. And when the Christian right insists that gays are not being persecuted, they aren’t talking about what happened to Seel in the 1940’s.

If you want to know what they really want, it’s pretty simple – and doesn’t involve any concentration camps.

They want us to agree that their doctrine is right: we are sinners, that we need salvation, that homosexuality is inherently inferior, and that our role is one of shame and silence. And they would like laws that say the same.

That would make us very forgivable and even lovable and they could say among their friends, “well I don’t care if Bruce is ‘that way, he is a miracle worker with my hair.” Many might even be sympathetic with ‘the plight of the homosexual’ and discourage law enforcement from mistreating them more that is necessary to discourage that way of life.

That’s it. That’s all they want. No torture, no concentration camps, no pulling out fingernails. They just want to be right.

And, of course, that is impossible.

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